


Faces I Have Known

by delgaserasca



Category: Raines (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca/pseuds/delgaserasca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raines is collecting ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faces I Have Known

**Author's Note:**

> Titles taken from Sheryl Crow; _It's Only Love_ and _There Goes The Neighbourhood_. Re-posted from livejournal.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;  
Petals on a wet, black bough.  
 ** _In a Station of the Metro_ , Ezra Pound.**

  


Sometimes lonely is not only a word but faces I have known  
And if you see me, could you free me with a smile so I can let go?  
 ** _It's Only Love_ , Sheryl Crow.**

 

 

The girl with the severed carotid artery is especially difficult to look at, even more so considering the length of time it takes to identify her. He flinches every time she appears, and by the end of the case, even Lance is forgoing her usual indifference in favour of allowing him a greater perimeter.

Her name is Emily, and she was killed by her stalker. As it turns out, she is - was - exceptionally pretty.

 

 

 

 

The serial killer leaves him sleepless. He goes to see Dr. Kohl with the first three victims in tow. Whilst she asks him how he's coping he has to resist the urge to tell Mr Spencer to leave Molly Drier alone, and ask Lizzie Roberts to stop running around the room. At one point he nearly drops his head into his hands, but he maintains control long enough to answer the increasingly insightful and probing questions the woman is devising.

When he leaves Kohl's office, Lizzie attempts to take three mints from the sweet bowl, effectively knocking it to the ground. He's half way to trying to catch it when he realises it never happened, but by that point it's too late.

"Thought I saw a nickel," he offers pathetically. Dr. Kohl doesn't answer.

He has two more house guests before the ordeal is over and even when they disappear, he struggles to conquer the insomnia.

 

 

 

 

It's odd to see Miguel Sanchez walking around with an axe in the back of his head but he seems to prefer it there, and as long as Michael doesn't actively have to look at the head wound, it isn't so much of a problem. That is, until he reads the coroner's report and Miguel begins to bleed everywhere. Raines takes to carrying around pocket-sized packs of Kleenex, ultimately a fruitful habit for when Boyer spills his coffee all over Sanchez's bank statements, and later still when he goes to tell Juanita Sanchez that her husband's death was the result of gang violence.

 

 

 

 

Ruta Boekel is Scandinavian, and whilst she steadfastly refuses to speak in English - and that's the moment at which he thinks he's really lost it this time, because why project a figment of the imagination that is so completely useless? - she has the unfortunate habit of wondering aimlessly away. It's only when he realises that this is her way of communicating that he starts to follow her around.

"I think she was lonely," he admits to Kohl as Ruta wanders around the room, idly lifting objects and setting them down with care. "She had nobody, nobody to talk to and no family to speak of. It seems she doesn't speak English—"

"Didn't," Kohl interrupts.

"What?"

"It seems she _didn't_ speak English. You said 'doesn't'."

"Oh, really?" He smiles a little, though not sincerely. "Slip of the tongue."

Kohl makes another secretive note on her jotter. Raines resists the urge to roll his eyes.

 

 

 

 

For three days the short, round bespectacled man found dead behind a Greek dive downtown follows him around making rude comments about Raines' tie collection, but when, on the fourth day, Raines finds out that the man is actually a father of four looking for an illegitimate daughter, he wakes in the middle of the night to find the man baking trays upon trays of Danish pastries.

As a final favour to him, Raines helps the daughter - homeless and addicted to cocaine, naturally, because god forbid anyone ever come to Los Angeles and actually succeed in their endeavours for fame, fortune and emotional happiness - enlist in a drug rehabilitation centre. Her father cries to see her ("She looks just like her mother," he sobs); he disappears before Michael has the chance to offer him a tissue.

He has difficulty sleeping for the rest of the week.

 

 

 

 

The Maher twins are obnoxious and irritating. He goes through half a bottle of bourbon just trying to drown out their voices.

 

 

 

 

"Tell me about her," Kohl says, right leg crossed casually over the left as always. Michael pretends not to notice the way her skirt rides a little higher, or the smooth, clean lines of her calves.

"Hmm?"

"The victim, Mary Summers?"

"Mary-Ann, yes. Well, she's adequately proportioned, polite. Careful." Pretty, too, in a girl-next-door sort of way, but he's not going to say that out loud. She's sat in the chair next to him, hair tightly braided, hands clasped together on her lap. She could be a modern-day Laura Ingalls.

"And knowing this about her, this helps you?"

(Mary-Ann leans in towards him, raises a hand to her mouth as though to cover the sound of her voice. "You're disgusting!" she spits, lowly. "Stop ogling the woman!")

Raines shakes his head at an inopportune moment, and Kohl stops speaking. "Is she here, right now?"

"No."

"You're a liar," Mary-Ann sneers. "Damn you!"

Raines keeps his hands folded on his legs, if only to prevent himself from waving her from his ears. She spends the remainder of the session listing his sins; he spends the time trying to concentrate.

Before he leaves, Kohl stops him at the door. "It would help more if you were to be truthful."

"Who's not being truthful, me?" he half protests, but Kohl's eyebrows rise derisively. He looks her squarely in the eye then nods before turning to leave. Mary-Ann's upper lip curls in scorn. "Harlot," she mutters, following him out.

 

 

 

 

Dan Harper hits on him - repeatedly. Raines doesn't know whether to be flattered or confused. He wonders what colour Kohl would turn if he started talking about masturbatory psychology. Then he thinks she'd probably take it head on, and that rather takes the fun out of the hypothesis.

 

 

 

 

Carolyn catches him laughing with Taylor Moore, a construction worker from Tennessee, when she comes to give him a copy of the victim's financial records. She quirks an eyebrow quizzically at him then, bless her cotton socks, pretends it's business as usual. Which, if he thinks about it, it is.

Taylor turns out to have a fetish for poker as well as a sense of humour, and tries to swindle Michael out of his best liquor. If he considers it, which, naturally, he doesn't, he almost misses the loud-mouthed lummox.

 

 

 

 

Lewis suspends him for a fortnight over the case concerning the illegal Chinese workers. It's obviously a thing for the Feds to take care of but that doesn't stop him from digging around. He calls Lance who helps him, albeit reluctantly ("If I get caught—" "So don't get caught!") and calls in a favour or three off the street before walking into Lewis' office and pleading his case. They bust the traffickers three hours later, and the petite Chinese woman who's been following him around, knitting needles in tow, smiles before snapping out of existence.

Lewis sends him home anyway. Of course.

 

 

 

 

He catches Leslie Mitchell bouncing around his living room with headphones on. From the minute he realises she was assaulted and beaten by someone she knew and loved, he's pictured her walking around with the headphones on. A little world of her own to hide in.

"She loved music," her mother had stammered. "She was always singing."

It's beautiful, and tragic, and Raines watches as she dances, so full of life and yet so obviously not. He breaks the scotch tumbler and cuts his hand. This earns him a few raised eyebrows (Carolyn, Lewis, Kohl - yes, in that order) but it makes him focus. The more his hand hurts, the less he has to pay attention to the teenage girl who loiters around his desk.

He considers talking to Kohl about her, but when it turns out her abuser is - was, _was_ \- her father, Raines spends half an hour retching emptily over the toilet bowl. Kohl asks if he feels relieved, and he faux-smiles, just like always, and shrugs. "Sure," he lies, smoothly. "Of course." He doesn't mention that she's taken to lingering on his periphery. The worst cases always do.

 

 

 

 

"You a crazy man," says the 25-year-old star quarterback that they found swinging from the basketball nets at Marlowe High.

"Well, yes. That I know. But you, you're not crazy, are you? You're just—"

"What? Average? Clichéd? Go on, say it. You know that's what you're thinking." The kid grimaces. "Like you'd know, Mr. Shine-yo'-Shoes."

Raines rolls his eyes. Every one's a critic these days.

"I was going to say all-American, but you're not entirely wrong." He likes to watch the kid bristle with indignation. If Raines is honest, the guy reminds him of Charlie back when they were first partnered together. He's got the same brash arrogance, the same confidence, even the same gleam in his eyes that tells Raines he means business.

"Who you callin' arrogant?" Charlie asks once the case is done with, voice full of mock indignation. Or it would be if he was actually there. "From what I remember, you're the one walking 'round like you own the joint."

"Well, now I'm the crazy one."

"Guess that makes me good cop."

"No. No, that just makes you dead."

He hears Charlie's laughter ringing in his ears, and he wonders if it's beginning to be a problem, the way he carries his demons around. Leslie Mitchell's sitting on a bench four feet away, and Charlie's walking off in the other direction. Michael watches him side step a little old lady and her ugly little dog. What if he starts collecting them like porcelain dolls, or model trains? What if they all start to linger, the same as Charlie or Leslie?

Kohl asks him the same question again. "Do you think you're going crazy?"

"No," he answers, and it's the truth: he _knows_ it.

  


**end.**


End file.
